A fierce dispute has erupted between Pulitzer prize-winning author Jared Diamond and campaign group Survival International over Diamond's recently published and highly acclaimed comparison of western and tribal societies, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

The controversy threatens to expose a deep rift in modern anthropology, with each claiming the other has fallen into a delusion that threatens to undermine the chances for survival of the world's remaining tribal societies.

On a book tour of the UK last week, Diamond, 75, was drawn into a dispute with the campaign group after its director, Stephen Corry, condemned Diamond's book as "completely wrong – both factually and morally – and extremely dangerous" for portraying tribal societies as more violent than western ones.

Survival accuses Diamond of applying studies of 39 societies, of which 10 are in his realm of direct experience in New Guinea and neighbouring islands, to advance a thesis that tribal peoples across the world live in a state of near-constant warfare.

"It's a profoundly damaging argument that tribal peoples are more violent than us," said Survival's Jonathan Mazower. "It simply isn't true. If allowed to go unchallenged … it would do tremendous damage to the movement for tribal people's rights. Diamond has constructed his argument using a small minority of anthropologists and using statistics in a way that is misleading and manipulative."

In a lengthy and angry rebuttal on Saturday, Diamond confirmed his finding that "tribal warfare tends to be chronic, because there are not strong central governments that can enforce peace". He accused Survival of falling into the thinking that views tribal people either as "primitive brutish barbarians" or as "noble savages, peaceful paragons of virtue living in harmony with their environment, and admirable compared to us, who are the real brutes".

"tribal warfare tends to be chronic, because there are not strong central governments that can enforce peace"

I'm not positive, but I think this guy may be a dipshit. Strong central governments usually arise when one warring faction massacres and oppresses the others. So he's saying there is a lot of warfare because no one has won yet? Seems pretty odd._________________Your argument is invalid.

"tribal warfare tends to be chronic, because there are not strong central governments that can enforce peace"

I'm not positive, but I think this guy may be a dipshit. Strong central governments usually arise when one warring faction massacres and oppresses the others. So he's saying there is a lot of warfare because no one has won yet? Seems pretty odd.

"tribal warfare tends to be chronic, because there are not strong central governments that can enforce peace"

I'm not positive, but I think this guy may be a dipshit. Strong central governments usually arise when one warring faction massacres and oppresses the others. So he's saying there is a lot of warfare because no one has won yet? Seems pretty odd.

"tribal warfare tends to be chronic, because there are not strong central governments that can enforce peace"

I'm not positive, but I think this guy may be a dipshit. Strong central governments usually arise when one warring faction massacres and oppresses the others. So he's saying there is a lot of warfare because no one has won yet? Seems pretty odd.

"tribal warfare tends to be chronic, because there are not strong central governments that can enforce peace"

I'm not positive, but I think this guy may be a dipshit. Strong central governments usually arise when one warring faction massacres and oppresses the others. So he's saying there is a lot of warfare because no one has won yet? Seems pretty odd.

And I'll take the bait. All this time I've been thinking that virtually every state was created by warfare and oppression. Is there some other way (historically speaking, not in principle) to form a strong central government?

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What is odd about saying that there is a lot of warfare because no one has won yet?

It's odd to say it as if it explains something._________________Your argument is invalid.

I wonder if the ability to predict the outcome of an election has any correlation to the strength of a central government._________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

Up until about 12,000 years ago, there is little evidence for much violence or warfare:
If you review the published information on the fossil record of humans and potential human ancestors from about six million years ago through about 12,000 years ago you are provided with, at best, only a few examples of possible death due to the hand of another individual of the same species. . . . Examination of the human fossil record supports the hypothesis that while some violence between individuals undoubtedly happened in the past, warfare is a relatively modern human behavior (12,000 to 10,000 years old).

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If, following Max Weber, we define a state as “the form of human community that (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a particular territory,” then indeed–although the argument is a bit circular–it may be that a modern state can reduce violence. However, making that claim as a definition should not impede understanding how the establishment of a monopoly on legitimate physical violence was often itself a violent process, and in many case still depends on high levels of everyday violence, surveillance, incarceration, border patrols.

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as Richard Lee and Irven DeVore put it in Man the Hunter:It is still an open question whether man will be able to survive the exceedingly complex and unstable ecological conditions he has created for himself. If he fails in this task, interplanetary archaeologists of the future will classify our planet as one in which a very long and stable period of small-scale hunting and gathering was followed by an apparently instantaneous efflorescence of technology and society leading rapidly to extinction. (1968:3)

And I'll take the bait. All this time I've been thinking that virtually every state was created by warfare and oppression. Is there some other way (historically speaking, not in principle) to form a strong central government?

I didn't mean that I would ignore it because it was bad or wrong; I just mean that I would ignore it because it wasn't relevant to the point I was trying to make.

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Quote:

What is odd about saying that there is a lot of warfare because no one has won yet?

Central government acts in society's best interest by preventing the worst excesses of rampant libertarianism?

Who knew!

i'm glad there are plenty of strong central governments preventing excesses of rampant libertarianism in utopias like north korea, china, cuba, and venezuela. aren't you? i mean, who needs food, water and shelter anyway?

how good would life be in Cuba if it weren't intentionally starved by the USA? Just a question you should spend some time on._________________Study finds stunning lack of racial, gender, and economic diversity among middle-class white males